Recipe for Success
By Craig Campbell, Special to the Daily Press
In this space, in magazines and books, at dinner tables and Congressional hearings, a national conversation about the keys to educational success has carried on and on. We now know more than ever before about different learning styles, improved teaching methods, clearer standards, and better assessment tools. Where I work, the Lewis Center for Educational Research, we employ a full time professional educational research staff and school psychologist to identify what works best for the students and families we serve. Our teachers are encouraged to study their own practices in the classroom so that we will be able to continually define and refine best practices and then share our findings with the educational community. While there are many factors that profoundly impact the success of any child at any school, a commitment to a nurturing, safe and positive educational environment is undeniably a powerful indicator of success. It is the school's ability to complement and extend the positive aspects of strong family relationships that make a school a good place to learn.
This positive nurturing relationship among parent, child, teacher and school is readily observable in many successful schools throughout the area, but absent in others. What are the conditions that make such winning relationships possible? In the best cases, parents assert their rights and interest in their children's school success. Highly engaged parents have a clear vision of what is expected of their children and of themselves in the education of their children and view the school as a partner. They do not abdicate their essential role in education to the school and the teacher. It is an enormous responsibility for all concerned. Successful schools must welcome their partners, not separate from them.
Second, the parents, school and teachers must be completely committed to each child's success in both intellectual and character development. This task is too large and too important to leave to any single influence. We must all pull in the same direction. Here the key for schools is to focus on each child, not larger groups. Unlike ants and bees in a hive, human groups don't learn collectively.
Third, citizens must make education physically possible. Recent support for new school facilities in California including the Victor Valley is encouraging. It is unfair and unreasonable to expect any teacher to reach every student when there are forty seats for fifty kids in a dilapidated room designed for twenty-five. It isn't true that schools are waste holes for your tax dollars. In fact, schools are among the most efficient spenders. In California, we've been well behind much of the country in terms of spending per pupil, and at least at the local level things are very lean.
Fourth, the schools must be safe and sane for every student, not just the toughest or tallest or loudest or most beautiful. Not every school will fit every student, but there must be a school for everyone. Our community has always been diverse by traditional definitions, but it is only recently true that there are school choices that align with the diversity of personalities among our students. We must abandon the century-old notion of educational factories in which students are herded as a lump from point to point, and then abandoned unprepared for life in the fast lane or any lane. For our children to succeed, we must all really want it to happen. It's never an accident.
Craig Campbell received his degree in English at the University of California, Berkley and has been with the Lewis Center since 1998.
Used with permission by Daily Press, Freedom Communication, 2004